You always know it's Memorex? No wonder nothing sounds real to you! If you're old enough to remember those commercials you can't hear anything over 12KHz anyway! [Big Grin] |
I agree with Elizabeth. I've played a recording of a flutist, with the flutist that made the recording standing between my speakers playing along with herself, and I can tell you the recording - which was far from SOTA - sounded a heck of a lot better than 5%. More like 90%. And that was before I upgraded my speakers.
How many other people here have tried this test?
Where audio systems fall off IMO is when you need a lot of volume to be accurate. Some live instruments are LOUD. As for reproducing a piano, that's almost too easy. We have a piano, so I know what one sounds like live, and a great stereo can do a remarkable job reproducing it. Now my wife's 22" bass drum, that my system has a little more trouble with. |
Avguy, in order to do a valid test you would have to record your friend's piano in his room, and play it back in a similar venue. Most commercial recordings are made in much larger rooms than nearly any home will have. How big is your neighbor's room with the piano in it? Unless the room is at least 20x30 feet it's like a whale in a swimming pool compared to how most recordings with a grand piano are made.
For those of you comparing reproduction of an orchestra in a home to a live concert, no contest. You can't accurately reproduce 70 or so musicians in your listening room. The proportions are all wrong. The room will overload before you'll get loud enough, and the moving areas of the speakers are too small.
I've found most people are surprised by the accuracy of recordings of instruments reproduced in similar venues, where the instruments are played at volumes appropriate for those venues, and reproduced over a very good audio system.
I agree with the previous comment made about a small jazz band (usually keyboard or upright piano, sax, small drum kit, bass, and a singer). We have a local resturant that features acoustic jazz groups that play at very reasonable levels, and my wife and I usually comment about how similar the sound is to my audio system. Sometimes I think the expectations for live music are blown out of proportion in the high-end community. |
"Have you ever been walking down a residential street on a summer day and heard a musician practicing his guitar, horn, drum set or whatever in his apartment? You know immediately, don't you?"
Yes, but it's not exclusive. I frequently play solo piano CDs, and several times people have come to the door and thought it was a real piano playing. Guys are usually fascinated. Women usually want to know if the speakers could be moved closer to the wall, and if the cables could be hidden. Sorry, Elizabeth. You and my wife are rare birds, apparently. |
Well, Phaelon, sounding "real" does happen for me, but not all that often, and, at least for me, only on solo recordings, and it takes just the right recording.
BTW, IMO people that buy audio equipment aren't heroes, people that engineer them are.
I think polar frequency response may have something to do with sounding "live". I've heard the Soundlab A1 sound live on a violin, the Soundlabs are of course dipoles, and occasionally my Revel Salon 2 sounds live (though not on violin, so far). The odd thing I've noticed, accidentally, about the Salon 2, is that even when you're sitting near one speaker you still perceive the stereo image *between the speakers*. This means that the Revel has some very interesting polar response characteristics, which might explain why they occasionally sound live, and my old Legacy Focus never sounded live to me. The Legacys had one of the most discernible "sweet spots" I've ever experienced. Great polar response might also explain why cymbals sound so realistic with the Revels, while their frequency response is certainly no better than other speakers I've heard.
The Legacys could fool some people on piano recordings though. Not me, but over the 13 years I owned them several people thought solo piano sounded live from another room.
It just seems more than a coincidence that the speakers I've heard "OMG live" sound from (Soundlab, Martin Logan Monolith, Linkwitz Orion, Revel Salon 2) all have different polar response characteristics than typical audiophile speakers. |
I would like to hear the MBLs, but have never had the opportunity. Perhaps that fortunate, because I probably can't afford them, my room probably won't support them, and they are so ugly even my understanding spouse would have to call foul.
The step response you speak of, which is really a time-domain impulse test, is interesting, but I don't think anyone has ever shown a correlation between good sound and a perfect impulse test. As I recently posted in another thread, and just my personal opinion, I consider the use of first-order crossovers, necessary to achieve the perfect time domain performance the CS5's demonstrate, are just a marketing gimmick, and lead to more problems than benefits.
The Soundlabs achieve linear phase response because they are a single driver, have no crossover, so naturally they are good in the time domain, but does that really contribute to their great sound? I don't know, but I doubt it.
I was very tempted by the Soundlabs, but their trade-offs didn't quite suit me. And they're huge. But when the A1s are good, like on stringed instruments, they are most engaging speaker I've ever heard. |
"I have a studio quality tape recorder playing back a tape I made in my own house. So am I to believe that 99% of the time it doesn't sound that real, but all the other times it does?"
No. It means that some of us believe you can recreate a pretty good facsimile of "live" when the sound sources being reproduced are well recorded, played back using some of the finest equipment available, and the sources are in reasonable proportion to the size of the room the audio system is in, and the system has the power to recreate the output of the source instrument. |
You're treading on dangerous turf, Phaelon, he says rolling his eyes. :-) Tube amps sound different from solid state amps for measureable, predictable, understandable reasons that can usually be explained by effective differences in the amp-speaker combination frequency response. The only way to tell if someone thinks a sound is "live" is by using a blind test and seeing if he or she can repeatedly correctly differentiate. I've never seen a metric for determining "live" has been achieved. |
"You're not being fair. Are we talking about measurements or listening? You can't talk measurements on the "does it sound like a tube debate" and then switch to listening on the "does it sound real" debate."
Actually, that's exactly my point. We *know* why tube amps can sound different, but the *opinion* that the playback of a recording sounds real is only measureable by measuring the individual human - in other words, can they tell the difference in a blind test? Perhaps it was you that confused me in your comparing this thread with the tube versus solid state threads.
Nonetheless, are you saying the blind comparison test would be an invalid measurement strategy? |
"All we need is five guys, earplugs, blindfold and a big box, like a Wilson crate, and a hand-truck. Also a Budget rental truck or even a pickup would work fine."
No, all you need is a musician, an audio system, and a blindfold. |
"Notice how Irvrobinson says all you need is a musician. A single musician? Talk about stacking the deck! Your system may sound "real" with a single musician softly playing a celesta, but can it handle a jazz big band or a full orchestra and choir?"
Of course not! We've already discussed this earlier in the thread. If the group of instruments won't fit your room, how could your audio system possibly make it sound real? Yes, a lot of systems can image beyond the walls of the room, but a facsimile of reality requires loudness, accurate loudness, and it can't be done in a small space. Or to put it in "you win" terms that Onhwy61 is looking for, I agree that an orchestra can't be reproduced in a small room in a way that can fool anyone it is real musicians.
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Bob Katz? You're quoting a mastering engineer for pop music, who's mostly concerned with mixing, compression, synthesizers, electric guitars, and drum machines, and his comment (taken out of context) about us not being able to reproduce "live" is relevant? How?
I agree with Katz, actually, my home system is waaay far away from reproducing a stack of JBL PA systems. |
Edseas2, not only did I read the OP's question, I own a copy of Katz's "Mastering Audio" book.
OK, you got me - I didn't know about his Chesky work, so I learned something there, but if you read his book it is definitely pop music oriented, as is the majority of his work I'm familiar with. |
We have a Steinway. You guys are exaggerating. I'm guessing none of you have ever recorded your own piano and replayed the recording on your system? If you're using a recording made in a huge venue it won't sound as dramatic. Also, have you used a sound meter at a given distance to see if you're playing the recording at a similar volume? If you haven't, you'd be shocked at how loud a live piano is. If you're using speakers like Thiels, or something else with limited cone area, forget it. |
Tbg, Have you ever had a live musician in your music room? |
Interesting, Timlub, the speakers that led me to believe I could come close to accurately reproducing piano were the original Legacy Focus (circa 1996). My previous A/D/S/ M15s could not. I also have to admit that the Legacy's proficiency on piano was a leap of faith for me, since the only way to buy Legacy speakers back then was factory direct. I actually talked with Dudleston at the time, asking him about piano reproduction, and after what I remember as a very long conversation he personally convinced me to place the order. I wasn't disappointed.
For you recording nerds, I used to use a Calrec Soundfield microphone (which I found used for $500 in a newspaper ad) and my absolutely mint Crown CX822 running Ampex 456 at 15ips. Modern digital recording sounds significantly better, but it's nowhere near as cool. |
Sitting here listening, as I type this, to Michel Camilo's Solo album (Telarc Jazz) at something like a realistic volume level... if this is 5% of live, I'll take it as-is and be happy for a long while. |
Atmasphere, there is no way that well-designed solid state amplifiers "tend to have these higher odd orders all the time. This is one of the reasons they tend to sound hard or bright. Now its important to note that these harmonics do not have to be very distorted, usually 100th of a percent are audible, simply because these harmonics are so important to the human ear." Total harmonic distortion, meaning any and all spurious frequencies away from the fundamental, is normally at about -70db or better, usually better, and there's no way that such low-level distortions could possibly cause amps to sound hard and bright.
The most likely cause of hard and bright sound are no-so-good speakers, that have too much upper midrange energy when driven by an amp with a low output impedance and flat frequency response. Connect a tube amp with a rising output impedance in the same frequency range, which will cause a roll-off in the overall response, and voila, hardness suddenly gone. |
Fas42, assuming the goal for all equipment is as much accuracy as possible, I do lay the entire blame on speakers. Solid state electronics can be designed to be, for home audio purposes, perfectly neutral, in that their noise and distortions are inaudible, and their frequency responses are flat regardless of load.
Speakers, on the other hand, are usually "voiced" Sometimes this is because the designer wants to achieve a certain "sound", but they are also voiced to apply judgment of how much high frequency roll-off the designer wants to apply to make the speaker sound natural in a room with certain absorption assumptions. I suppose you could argue voicing in the bass might also be necessary, because of room variations.
The latest speakers, designed with the latest driver technology and sophisticated crossovers designed with the latest software, can produce awesomely flat frequency responses these days. The latest speaker designs seem to have frequency responses that remind me of curves we used to see for amps in the 1960's. (Distortion levels too.) But lots of speakers are still "voiced" to sound a certain way according to a designer's biases, and the best drivers and crossovers (and cabinets too) are actually very expensive, so a lot of high end speakers still have response curves that look like saddles (too much bass and too much treble), and compromised crossovers that produce anomalies at the crossover points.
The differences in solid state electronics are far smaller. With tube electronics, one can design them to be as neutral as SS types (VTL comes to mind), but things like SET amps will have nearly unpredictable interactions with a particular speaker. |
Atmasphere says:
"OK- you obviously understand how low the distortion levels are we are talking about. I think I did express that 100th of a percent is audible- seems like that needs more emphasis. Since we humans use the odd orders (5th, 7th and 9th) in order to determine how loud a sound is, obviously while the ear is not sensitive to *some* things, this is one thing that the ear is *very* sensitive to. BTW all of this has been known since the 60s and Norman Crowhurst was writing about this subject in the 1950s.
So this is indeed a way that explains why transistor amps can sound harsh while having otherwise flat frequency response. Note also that with many transistor amplifiers, as power output decreases there is a dip in distortion and then it rises again as power output continues to decrease. This is one of the reasons that low level detail is challenging for transistor designs."
First of all, pardon my ignorance for not knowing that you are a producer of tube amplifiers. That just occurred to me last night while reading some of your responses, and I do realize that arguing tube versus solid-state with you is probably not productive.
But your explanation above is such nonsense that I can't help but reply. I'll buy that humans are very sensitive to certain kinds of harmonic distortion, but I'll reiterate that the distortions you are discussing in high-quality solid-state amps are very likely well under -70db, probably more like -80db, and that's below the noise level of the large majority of recordings. Certainly that is under anything reproducible from vinyl.
Furthermore, the 9th harmonic of frequencies above 2KHz is above audibility for most people, especially accounting the -70db level of the tones we're discussing.
So I think quoting research references just clouds your argument. And then concluding that all of this mumbo-jumbo you're discussing indeed describes why solid-state amps sound harsh and lack low-level detail is just so much malarkey. Solid-state amps have neither of these characteristics you claim they do just for promoting your tube products.
Tube amps can demonstrate interactions with loudspeakers this can result in an altered system frequency response, and those alterations can highlight (or hide) details in recordings. But this isn't because of some imagined limitations of solid-state amps, or even negative feedback. I could more easily argue the differences are due to the inferior performance of some tube amps. While everything in audio can be reduced to personal preference, my preference is to try and make as many factors in the reproduction chain as neutral as possible. |
Atmasphere, I noticed that the output impedance of one of your amps is about 4 ohms, and I assume that impedance is not perfectly linear across all ten octaves. So, isn't that high output impedance going to affect the audible frequency response of the amp-speaker combination, and in ways that vary with every different loudspeaker's impedance curve? |
Mapman says:
"Well, the whole negative feedback issue has been beaten to death pretty thoroughly already in other threads.
My conclusion is that it is just one of many design and execution factors that affect results depending on how well it is executed."
I couldn't agree more. |
"Irvrobinson, while our amplifiers tend to have higher output impedances, that impedance curve is nearly identical to the frequency response curve of the amplifier, IOW linear from 2Hz-100KHz."
And how does that 4ohm+ output impedance affect interaction with the loudspeakers, since loudspeakers do not usually have anything like linear impedance curves? Won't this effect the system frequency repsonse? Or are you assuming very high impedance speakers with very smooth impedance curves, like Soundlabs? |
Actually, Ed, I don't think anyone said an occasional note sounded live, but only an occasional recording. Most of my recordings contain more than one note. ;)
FWIW, I don't think the Camilo sounds live on my system. Very nice, but not live. Too syrupy. Not enough edge. I think it's those Sennheiser mikes I bitched at Jack Renner about many years ago ('80s), when he started using them for Telarc classical recording. And they really don't work for Jazz, IMHO.
As for the one billion notes, well, maybe. Assuming 100 musicians playing 40 hours per week, all quarter notes :), for 20 years, that's about 1.1 billion notes or so. But that's 40 continuous hours per week, every second of every minute, of every hour. Maybe he rounded up. |
Well, Edseas2, I'm so glad that your view settles everything, after all! And of course, you have the BAS to back you up. And to think we've created a thread five pages long discussing a conclusion we could have just asked you for. :)
Merry Christmas, Ed. |
